


Two Last Things

by irisbleufic



Series: CoT ’Verse (& Extended Environs) [4]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 17th Century, Angels, Character Death, Clueless Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Death, Demons, Diaspora, Drama, England (Country), Europe, Fallen Angels, Folklore, Gen, Golems, Grief/Mourning, Historical, Judaism, London, Loss, M/M, Midrash, Minor Character Death, Mutual Pining, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), Pining, Prague, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Protectiveness, References to Shakespeare, Shakespeare Quotations, Theatre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28522833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisbleufic/pseuds/irisbleufic
Summary: Aziraphale grimaced at the looping script and shoved it back at [Crowley]. “That’s where I’m headed.”The parchment sizzled to ash in Crowley’s palm. “That’s not all I know. That Maharal fellow’s on his way out. Er, whatsisface—Rabbi Loew?”“Then what are you doing here?” Aziraphale blurted, bewildered at Crowley’s presence. Upstanding religious leaders merited monitoring, but rarely by the other side. “I’m meant to…” He bit his tongue, wondering how much he ought to censor. “Follow up on an accomplishment he’s rumored to have, er, accomplished. See to it there’s no unfinished business surrounding…that.”“What am I doing here?” Crowley snapped, growing agitated. “To find out how he bloody well did it, preferably before the breath leaves his body. D’you think Ilikewatching humans die?”[Each of the 2 companion ficlets in this piece was written as a gift in the 2020 Good Omens Holiday Exchange.]
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: CoT ’Verse (& Extended Environs) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1383571
Comments: 12
Kudos: 41





	1. To His Dust I Return

Aziraphale leaned heavily against the brick wall, panting harshly as he glanced from side to side.

The alley was empty save for a few unsightly trash heaps, which meant nobody had seen him appear. Miracling oneself somewhere instead of traveling the good old-fashioned human way was now strongly frowned-upon, as humans had grown remarkably desensitized.

The night was dark, but the last thing Aziraphale wanted to risk was ending some poor soul’s life ahead of schedule by triggering a heart attack. He hadn’t personally witnessed someone snuffing it from sheer shock, but rumor had it Michael had set the precedent behind the policy change.

In spite of Earth’s calendar now reading 1609 on this particular continent, if one wanted to just pop from one place to another, one was strongly encouraged—or kindly threatened, depending on the way you looked at it—to do it the hard way. Bugger _that_.

Just Aziraphale’s luck, that as he turned to exit the alley while dusting off garb that would undoubtedly cause the locals to dismiss him as a bumbling Englishman, there was a forceful _smack_ against the brick. It was followed by a low hiss of irritation, and not just any hiss.

“This is Prague,” Crowley said irrelevantly, pretending he hadn’t just made a bad landing. “Not your sort of place, I should think. Far too…Bohemian, d’you catch my drift?”

“Oh, that’s very funny,” Aziraphale said, folding his arms across his chest. “Taking up puns?”

“Look, you’re the one always telling me to lighten up,” Crowley said, attempting the same nonchalance Aziraphale had attempted on his own arrival, but with much less dignity.

“Fine,” Aziraphale sighed, indicating that Crowley should approach. “Let’s talk. We wouldn’t both be here if there weren’t something afoot.”

“I’ve got an address. That’s the only specific thing about my orders,” Crowley said shiftily.

Aziraphale pressed his fingers to his temples. “Is it written down? Any chance I might see it?”

Crowley shrugged, rummaged in his doublet, and held out a scrap of singed parchment. “Sure.”

Aziraphale grimaced at the looping script and shoved it back at him. “That’s where I’m headed.”

The parchment sizzled to ash in Crowley’s palm. “That’s not all I know. That Maharal fellow’s on his way out. Er, whatsisface—Rabbi Loew?”

“Then what are you doing here?” Aziraphale blurted, bewildered at Crowley’s presence. Upstanding religious leaders merited monitoring, but rarely by the other side. “I’m meant to…” He bit his tongue, wondering how much he ought to censor. “Follow up on an accomplishment he’s rumored to have, er, accomplished. See to it there’s no unfinished business surrounding… _that_.”

“What am I doing here?” Crowley snapped, growing agitated. “To find out how he bloody well did it, preferably before the breath leaves his body. D’you think I _like_ watching humans die?”

Aziraphale was startled. One, Crowley knew exactly what Judah Loew ben Bezalel was rumored to have done. Two, he’d never quite considered that, had he—that Crowley’s aversion to heartbreak truly wasn’t feigned. He thought of all the times over the centuries he’d told Crowley to buck up, stiff upper lip and all that. Inwardly, he cringed.

“Listen here, dear boy,” Aziraphale said, clapping Crowley’s shoulder, “I’ll go in with you. Heaven knows _my_ people don’t need to know I’ve shared my research on the, er, method behind the madness. Not that we have anything more than strange hearsay.”

“More like the method behind the mud,” Crowley muttered, shaking him off. “And Heaven _is_ your people. You’ve made that joke before, angel.”

“What were you saying about lightening up?” Aziraphale jibed, but stopped smiling the moment Crowley shot him a withering glance. “Fine, business it is. Lead the way.”

Breaking and entering always felt underhanded even when Aziraphale was acting on orders. He couldn’t help but wonder if Crowley felt the same way as he miracled the lock open, hustled Aziraphale inside, and soundlessly closed the wooden door behind them.

“Why is there no one?” Crowley whispered nervously as they passed through the cold, silent scullery and into the main part of the house. “His wife, surely? Or perhaps a maid?”

“Pearl’s _yahrzeit_ has come and gone,” Aziraphale replied. “As for household staff—”

“I know better than to deny entry to your kind,” called a strained voice from down the hall. 

Realizing Crowley was no longer keen to lead him on, Aziraphale stepped boldly ahead and opened the bedroom door ahead of them. He stared at the partially moonlit four-poster bed.

“Whether I’m to be turned to salt, well,” said Judah, his voice subsiding to a frail rasp even as his lips twisted in mirth, “that’s of far more import to you at this stage than it is to me.”

“Hah,” Crowley exhaled, his jitters worsening as he flashed white teeth at Judah. “Good one.”

“Take those lenses off, young man,” said Judah. “Come a bit closer, eh? Spare my old eyes?”

“Where is it?” Aziraphale asked, no need for artifice since the old man knew what he was.

“Forgive him,” Crowley said hastily, approaching Judah’s bedside. “No manners, this one.”

Judah sighed, studying the ceiling with bloodshot eyes. “Gone from Creation. Nine years.”

Aziraphale frowned while Crowley uncomfortably pocketed his tinted glasses. “Destroyed?”

“Not by my hand,” Judah whispered, closing his eyes. “Not as rumor would have you think.”

“That’s…reassuring, though, right?” Crowley said, glancing upward in relief when he realized he wasn’t being treated as a curiosity. “Saves us the trouble of chasing the blasted thing down for you, eh?”

Judah’s eyes snapped open, narrowing in fierce, unexpected fury. “How dare you belittle him! _You_ , with such imperfect eyes and tongue! He was even as I am. Flesh, fashioned from clay, even if not blood.”

“Apologies,” Aziraphale said, deciding the interview might fare better if he took it from there. “He?”

Judah moaned feebly, his anger subsiding into an instant, shocking display of grief. “My Bezalel.”

“Your…” Crowley rummaged frantically in his doublet, pulling out a few more scraps of parchment. “That was—wait, you must mean your father?”

“No,” Judah said sadly, finally regarding Crowley with unblinking pity. “He was my son.”

“Named for his grandfather,” Aziraphale said soothingly, frustrated that senility had seemingly blown the old man’s focus off topic. “He must have done the name honor. Er, if we might be getting back to the matter at hand—”

“This is all the matter I care to discuss,” Judah said with a reprisal of venom. “You will listen.”

Aziraphale bit his tongue, wondering if letting the old man ramble might get them to the information eventually. Surely such a momentous achievement was in his dying thoughts. Humans were proud creatures until the end of their days.

“I’ll listen,” Crowley said, his affect filled with genuine-sounding empathy. “Set your story straight, so to…speak.” He didn’t look happy about witnessing Judah’s decline _or_ about the sequence of sibilants betraying him further.

“Bezalel was a bright boy,” Judah said, his gaze once again distant. “So fragile in comparison to his sisters at birth, our youngest. His mother wanted nothing to do with him at first, which…this, I could forgive. She’d had no say in his coming into this world.”

“She hadn’t wanted more children?” Aziraphale asked, knitting his brow in confusion. “Pity.”

Crowley didn’t speak, but his posture had grown curiously tense even as he leaned closer.

Judah misted over, his breath turning to a rasp. “Perhaps you would know a thing or two about being sent forth for a purpose you did not choose. “You were collateral, no? As was my boy.”

“You could say that of any child,” Crowley replied tersely. “Rabbi, we don’t…have much time.”

“You mean I don’t have much time,” Judah rasped. “Where was I? Ah, right. Bezalel needed…much instruction, more than his sisters ever had. I taught him to speak, to read, to write. To laugh, play…grieve, _fight_ …”

Aziraphale was growing more irritated by the second. The last thing that he and Crowley needed was for Judah to use his last gasp reminiscing about when he was a young father.

Crowley elbowed Aziraphale in the ribs. “Gone,” he said between gritted teeth. “Nine years.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry for your loss,” Aziraphale said hastily. “No father should outlive his son.”

Judah shrugged, which was, when contrasted with the weight of his sorrow, an unusual reaction.

“Bezalel grew strong and smart. He learned, and he taught. But, at my bidding, he also fought.”

Crowley’s intake of breath was so sharp that Aziraphale jumped. “Oh no,” Crowley whispered.

“Oh yes,” Judah said, eyes overbrimming at last. “The Word ought not to have lasted so long.”

Aziraphale scrambled to put the pieces together, arriving at the curious conversation’s horrifying, yet touching conclusion too late, always too late. And always, _always_ a step behind Crowley.

“Your…son, he protected your people,” Crowley insisted, clearly struggling to keep it together.

Judah’s expression darkened, although he did not stop crying. “Name him. Speak what he was.”

“Golem,” Aziraphale said quietly, berating himself for having been blind. “Bezalel ben Judah.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, too,” Crowley said softly, glancing sidelong at Aziraphale. “There’s nothing to see here, angel. Nothing to report. It was a hoax. We’ll tell them it was—”

“To his dust I return,” Judah wheezed, hand outstretched. “Truth, at last, becomes death.”

Before Aziraphale could lift his hand in response, Crowley clasped the old man’s fingers.

“Goddamn it,” Crowley whispered, his bright eyes closing as Judah’s grasp went slack.

“No,” Aziraphale murmured, putting an arm around Crowley. “I assure you He will not.”


	2. Worth It This Time

It was after the 1609 golem affair in Prague that Aziraphale noticed Crowley’s demeanor began to change. When he’d come home from Florence with his first pair of tinted glasses in 1500, it had been obvious whose ingenious handiwork was to blame. However, his motivations for acquiring them seemed bizarre. He had never complained of his body’s vision being faulty.

Prior to the invention of spectacles, Crowley had never been able to hide the truth about his eyes. Aziraphale had never known him to try terribly hard, either, although the Plague of 1348 and the Inquisition’s aftermath in 1488 had both dealt blows to his proclivity for keeping a straight face under duress. Crowley’s hair-trigger emotional upheavals were no longer avoidable.

Crowley had come home from a visit to Florence in 1515 with the devilishly clever contraption more tightly fitted to the bridge of his nose than ever. Alienated by the lack of clear access to Crowley’s gaze, Aziraphale had been hard-pressed to admit his motivations for avoiding Crowley until they’d run into each other in Prague six years shy of a century later. 

Aziraphale was also ashamed to acknowledge his avoidance of Crowley after their attendance at the Maharal’s deathbed. In the seven years since then, they’d both grown increasingly involved in London’s burgeoning theatrical scene. Crowley had already been following the milieu of players with which Aziraphale’s favorite writer at that point in time would get involved. 

The premiere of _Hamlet_ , also in 1609, had been a difficult chaser to the events in Prague, what with Crowley still bitter about Marlowe’s death in Deptford. After that, they began running into each other, hovering about the edges of rehearsals. _The Tempest_ ’s premiere in 1611 saw them both involved so fully as production crew that they’d inevitably learned most of the lines.

News of Shakespeare’s decline arrived on 25 April 1616. When Aziraphale’s informant mentioned that the playwright had signed his will scarcely four weeks prior, Aziraphale finally understood Crowley’s bitter, heartsick demeanor over Marlowe.

Crowley didn’t seem to appreciate Aziraphale tossing rocks at his shutters before nine o’clock.

Crowley squinted at Aziraphale, leaning on the windowsill. “What the devil’s got you up so early? This isn’t one of Will’s rom coms.”

“Will,” Aziraphale said dourly, but resisted the urge to add _the devil, too, given I’m standing here talking to you_. “He’s taken ill.”

Crowley blinked down at him sadly. “He’s _been_ ill, angel. It was a matter of time.”

“Yes, but one of our colleagues thinks he’s taken a turn for the worse,” Aziraphale said, shifting uneasily. “He signed his will a few weeks ago.”

Crowley was silent for several breathless, interminable seconds, his eyes going wide and round. He stepped back from the window without warning, no longer visible, and didn’t reappear until after what felt like an eternity of knocking about his quarters, hissing and cursing.

“Sssorry,” Crowley said, fully dressed and bespectacled when he returned. “Let’s go at once.”

Aziraphale felt the tightness in his chest ease; he wasn’t even going to have to ask. “We ought.”

Crowley turned his head from side to side, the only sign he was attempting caution. “Come up.”

Aziraphale trusted Crowley’s assessment that nobody had been watching. He willed himself to vanish, re-materializing in Crowley’s bedroom a second later. Fleetingly, he thought of the last time he’d been anywhere near Crowley and a bed, which had been Barcelona a hundred and twenty years ago, give or take. He pushed the memory away, wracked with shame.

“Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts,” Crowley said, shrugging into his cloak before pulling on gloves. “We’re going the same way?”

“Er,” Aziraphale said. His rush had as much to do with Crowley’s tense posture as it had to do with his looming grief. “Hold on, my dear.”

Before Crowley could pull away from Aziraphale’s sudden seizing of his upper arms, they were already at their destination. He stared at the misty, deserted high street, flinching at the sound of Holy Trinity’s bells not far off. Briefly, his grip on Aziraphale’s elbows tightened.

“No one’s out,” Crowley said. “It’s a Monday morning, there’s trade to be conducted, and—”

“Hurry,” Aziraphale said, maintaining his hold on Crowley whether the demon liked it or not, dragging him in the direction of the bells’ clamor.

By the time they reached the churchyard, the bell had fallen silent. Half the town was filing out of the church, their conversation a low murmur.

Crowley tried to pull away again, but Aziraphale held him fast, beneath a willow’s low-hanging branches, until most of the crowd had abated. Troubling, to realize Crowley had avoided looking at him ever since their abrupt arrival in Stratford several minutes before.

“Pretend we’re latecomers,” Crowley said through gritted teeth, hauling Aziraphale toward the door. “Best we wait. Who says Mass on a Monday?”

“Clergy do, if it’s for the soul of some lately departed…” Aziraphale halted them on the threshold, staring at the chancel in horror. “ _Oh_.”

“Come from London, have you?” sighed the priest, clearing the altar before bustling behind the rood screen. “Pay your respects and begone.”

Crowley sniffed, which Aziraphale took for disdain until glimpsing his eyes, in profile, behind the dark lenses. They glittered with tears.

“Since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,” he said, approaching the newly laid slab, “I will be brief.”

Aziraphale joined Crowley before the tomb, setting his hand on the inscription. He glanced at Crowley.

“Dear boy, please,” Aziraphale murmured, his own eyes beginning to sting. “Take…”

Crowley set his left hand over Aziraphale’s, pinning it against the stone. He removed the glasses with his right hand, tucking them in his doublet.

Crowley’s eyes burned dull gold with more than just grief. “Was it worth the trouble this time?”

“What?” Aziraphale asked, curling his hand around Crowley’s. “Getting too close to humans?”

“No,” Crowley said wretchedly, staring at the inscription once more. “Getting too close to me.”


End file.
